


undone

by nymja



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bittersweet, F/M, Spoilers for 8x3, Tumblr fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-10 00:45:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18649477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymja/pseuds/nymja
Summary: Her hand finds him and she laces her fingers through what’s left of his.--Somewhere, their story ends differently.





	undone

Somewhere, his story ends differently.

\--

How it ends is much the same. He’s too injured to rise from the snow, and so he can only watch as Arya leaps into the air, as she drops her dagger and plunges it into the Night King. He coughs up blood and thinks it’s time to die, but then he feels a strong arm pulling the spear from his body.

“C’mon,” Arya Stark says in a raspy voice, her body shaking. “Let’s get you home.”

\--

After, his eyes try to open. The light is dim, only a few torches. He smells stone and cold air. He smells blood.

“Don’t move,” someone says above him. He does not know the voice. “Drink.”

He can’t, so the voice pours it past his lips and rubs at his throat until he’s made to swallow. It’s bitter. It all tastes so bitter.

“Bran,” he chokes out, half of the name falling away as he can’t finish.

“Alive,” the voice says.

The fight leaves him at the word, and his body goes numb until it goes dark.

\--

Later, his eyes open more easily. This time he knows the voice.

“Don’t move much,” Sansa commands, her hand over his.

He doesn’t. Instead he just looks up. She stares down at him, her eyes red and streaks of dirt and blood over her face. He watches, as she tries to smile and fails.

He can’t smile, either. Instead his vision goes cloudy, his cheeks warm as the tears fall. As her fingers flex against the width of his hand and don’t let go.

\--

He’s made to stay behind as the others march on King’s Landing. His body’s still recovering, he’s informed, and his chin quivers when the Maester says he’s weak.

He can’t move much. Every muscle seems to quake and resist as he grabs hold of the walls with one of his hands, shuffling down the dark. Winterfell is quiet, now. The dead and the living both at rest.

“Do you need help?”

Theon turns, looks over his shoulder with great effort. Sansa stands behind him, her expression soft. He shakes his head.

She pulls his arm over her shoulder anyway.

\--

That night, they eat dinner together in her room. The feasting hall is too quiet, too empty. The pair of them are across from each other on her bed, close enough that their knees touch. There aren’t any words, doesn’t need to be any words as they both uncoil bit by bit.

“They didn’t think you would make it,” she whispers after the food’s long gone but neither of them have moved.

“...Worse ways to die,” he finally manages.

She nods, somber. Once again, her hand finds him and she laces her fingers through what’s left of his.

Her words are quiet. “Maybe we ought to find better ways to live.”

He doesn’t know if he can. But if he were, it’d be right here. Right now. In the quiet moments with her.

\--

It takes him a few days to face Bran again. When he does, the words he says surprise him in how they sink into his chest.

“You’re ashamed,” Bran observes.

He flinches.

“There’s no need to be,” Bran continues.

“I don’t know what to do now,” he confesses.

He meets his eyes, stare a thousand miles or years or lives away.

“You will,” Bran says simply.

\--

It’s hard to sleep now. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees the blue. Feels the snow falling on his face. He stares at the ceiling, hands clasped over his stomach.

Sansa opens the door to his room, and there are no words spoken between them as she lays down to the side of him. Her cheek finds his shoulder and he breathes in the smell of her hair and after what feels like hours he finally speaks.

“Would you still have me here?”

“You don’t have to ask that.”

\--

He walks the battlements when he’s healed enough to do so. Most days, his walk is solitary, but one morning he sees the flare of her hair in the distance.

Her hands are braced on the stone wall, her back heaves with a silent sob.

He watches as she tilts her head up when the snow starts to fall. After a moment, he has to look away.

The retreat is a silent one. This is all he needs.

\--

There is a raven.

Sansa laughs, the sound more of a bark than he remembers when they were children. Her gloved hands are shaking as she raises the parchment to the candlelight, as though she can’t believe what she reads.

“Jon’s dead,” she breathes out in disbelief. She is not laughing, he realizes. “We’re to bend the knee.”

His stands behind her, and presses his hand between her shoulder blades.

Sansa turns her head to look over her shoulder at him, tears falling with abandon.

“This is our _home_ ,” she says brokenly.

He doesn’t have an answer for her. Doesn’t know if he, or anyone, can make this right.

When she turns around, he brings his arms around her and rests his cheek on her shoulder.

\--

When the time comes, when Daenerys Targaryen arrives to accept their allegiance, he watches as Sansa can’t force herself to move. Her eyes burn into the Dragon Queen’s, her spine rigid and her hands clenched into fists.

She can’t bend the knee. To do so would break her.

And so he steps forward, and bends it for her.

It doesn’t mean anything, but Daenerys looks down at him with a sad smile and seems to understand.

\--

That night she comes to his room again, her head in his lap as he threads his fingers through her hair.

He would do anything she asked of him.

\--

There is a homecoming.

“Thank you,” Arya says, her face haunted. “For staying with her.”

\--

Sansa doesn’t marry, although there are offers. He knows, because he watches the ravens, the suitors. She is still the Lady of Winterfell. This place will always be the Starks’.

They stand together on the battlements, looking down as Winterfell starts to rebuild itself with the help of Queen Daenerys’ resources.

She looks at him, her face resolved and sad. “What are you going to do?”

He gives a small smile. “Would you still have me here?”

She leans forward, presses her lips to his cheek.

“You don’t have to ask me that.”

\--

Somewhere, their story ends differently.


End file.
